Katyń

I’ve made two mistakes the other day when I referred to the film “Katyń”. First, the director was not Andy Vajna but Andrzej Wajda, and second, I called it “of a genius”, which was a kind of propagandistic praise, judged hastily by me, without first watching it. I just got used to the fact that Poles do a good job with their historical films—Quo Vadis, for instance—and they do not make films for a political course as it is common round here (see any of those cellulose horrors from Sacra Corona to Sorstalanság [Fateless]). Katyń—though it is still better than those artificial cover-up products of the “Hungarian” film industry made to hide the criminal acts of misappropriation—is not worthy of any special attention.

The whole room in the cinema was empty, there was only two of us. “The prole are so much interested in history”, we drew the conclusion, since we did not know that proles can be right sometimes. The film starts on a railway bridge. There’s a stampede of Poles running away from the Germans there, but suddenly fugitives appear on the other side as well. “The Russkies are here!”, they shout, then all of them just stand there looking at one another: “What to do now?”

Then we see the Russians scenically rip off the Polish flag at a railway station, tearing away the white stripe, putting back the red one, and a soldier is winding up the white one on his foot for a rag. In the meantime, they put the Polish soldiers into wagons. One of the soldiers’ wife and little daughter arrive on bikes. They talk about having no fear, everyone would be going home soon. But, of course, we know why the title of this film is Katyń.

From there on, the film is drowning in drawling, boring dialogues, with at least one dark and dramatic component in every scene, nerve-rackingly planned for effect. We don’t get to know anything about the events, who is who, why they are there, what they do, and in what kind of historical age we are at all, save WWII. There are women fighting with themselves back at home, there are men as prisoners-of-war, one major is writing a diary, that’s what the story is actually on about, but somehow this plot is lost after the first twenty minutes of the film, and you feel that there is a new film beginning in every fifth minute, cancelling the previous one without unfolding the story. Halfway through the film, a playwriter’s disaster is all done. Characters come and go, settings keep flashing in, but it is obscure who is who by who, why they came about, who the other ones are and why they said such things, but the Russkies are real bastards, so are the Germans, but the Russkies really are. But all these things tell us nothing. There are references to some historical events, but someone who doesn’t know what the characters are on about, will not ever know. Someone who knows the historical background—and I suspect, in the age of the liberal brainwashing not even each of the Poles are aware of that—will not enjoy the shallow plot, while someone who doesn’t know what had happened in Katyń and why, will be getting bored of the arty struggle.

It is praiseworthy, though, even if only between the lines but the film sometimes bravely has a go at the present age, at the forced dogmas. But you should not make a historical film in the above way. Go and learn something from Spielberg. Schindler’s List did not become a worldwide success because everyone is so much interested in holo-tales, but because it is a professional work. It has a plot, it has characters to follow, has a lively story, even when it’s not true in fifty percent the least. The Poles took it all over from Hollywood, especially the photography—which is simply masterful—except the rules of playwriting, without which it’s all worth nothing. It is a bad film, not worthy of watch.

(Translated from the Hungarian. Source:  Egy rossz film: Katyń)